I’ve heard the phrase “everything here is simple” many times.
In different companies, from different people, almost always with the same confidence.
“Small business. Nothing complicated.”
And at the moment it’s said, that’s usually true.
A website, email, a couple of tools, an office network.
No data centers, no clusters, nothing exotic. Everything familiar, habitual, seemingly under control.
The problem is that simplicity is not a property of a system.
It’s a feeling.
That feeling appears when a system is small.
Or when no one has touched it in a long time.
Or when problems are solved as they come up, without any attempt to understand what’s really happening as a whole.
Over time, that feeling starts to lie.
At first, almost imperceptibly.
Another service gets added. Then another employee. Then remote access.
Someone brings in a “convenient solution” that perfectly solves a specific problem but doesn’t fit anywhere else.
Taken individually, everything looks fine. Even logical.
No one is deliberately making things complex.
This is how what later gets called “everything here is complicated” gradually accumulates—
even though no one ever planned to complicate the system.
The most unpleasant moment comes when a simple system stops being transparent.
It still works, but it no longer explains itself.
You can’t quickly answer what depends on what.
Why this is updated one way and not another.
What will happen if you turn off or change a specific part.
That’s when caution appears.
And then — fear of touching anything at all.
The irony is that this is exactly when people most often say:
“We’re not a corporation, we don’t need complex architecture.”
Even though the problem is no longer architecture.
The problem is the lack of understanding.
I don’t think complexity is inherently bad.
Sometimes it’s justified. Sometimes it’s the price of scale, convenience, or control.
But complexity has to be intentional.
When it appears on its own — without a decision and without being recorded — it always starts to get in the way.
That’s why “simple” systems so often break unexpectedly.
Not because they’re bad, but because their simplicity stopped matching reality a long time ago.
They’ve grown, but they keep living as if they were still small.
At some point, any change starts to feel risky.
Updates get postponed.
There’s no documentation — because “it’s obvious anyway.”
Decisions are made cautiously and locally, so as not to disturb anything else.
That’s the end of the illusion of simplicity.
From there, there are always two paths.
Either you continue living in a state of careful stagnation, hoping nothing serious will happen.
Or you admit that the system has become a system — even if the business is still small.
Sometimes that admission alone is enough.
Not because something new immediately appears,
but because self-deception disappears.
It becomes clear where the complexity is real, and where it’s merely being covered up with the words “everything here is simple.”
And that, strangely enough, often really does make life simpler.
All images used in this article are fictional and were generated by AI. They do not depict real people, offices, or situations.